Californians barely had time to ring in the new year before the state’s independent contractor law, which went into effect on Jan 1., started wreaking havoc.
The law, formally known as AB5, was supposed to offer more benefits to workers in the modern gig economy. Instead, it has spectacularly backfired on those very workers. Once lauded by Vox as “cracking down on the gig economy” by offering workers “basic labor protections for the first time,” AB5 has forced news outlets, including Vox’s parent company, to cut ties with hundreds of freelance journalists in California. This is due to the law’s stipulation that any writer submitting more than 35 pieces a year be given full employee benefits.
AB5 affects roughly two-thirds of California’s 2 million independent contractors, ranging from janitors and childcare workers to retail and construction workers. Notably exempt from the law are white-collar jobs such as medicine and dentistry, but the level of clout matters in this distinction: a physician specialist who contracts his labor is exempt from AB5. A nurse is not.
Once again, stupidity rears its idiotic progressive head in a Democrat run government. Their intelligence quotient is truly lower than whale shit. How do they manage even the simplest tasks?
Never mind. They can’t.
No greater terror to our nation than from the left inside it.
“RUN!!”
“RUN!!”
Just not this way. I hear Canada is nice. Or Mexico.
“Atlas Shrugged” is real?
THE perfect example to show that our rights come from a higher power. The Government of man can only take rights away. D’s or R’s, it’s just one is slower and more subtle about taking.
The California government is running out of things they can screw up but that doesn’t stop the foppish governor from trying, that is when he can pull himself away from the mirror.
Political Hubris: the notion that your new legislation is so awesome, no one would want to find ways to avoid it.
Wow. I had this argument in about 1997 with former Secy of Labor Shorty Reich when he was the keynote speaker at a recruiter expo in San Diego. At the time I could see the challenges companies faced — especially high tech on the west coast — in recruiting highly qualified people who could get much more interesting work by being free agents, not to mention how much more they could earn through contracting. High tech contractors don’t care about company percs that they don’t benefit from, like free soda and super fun sweatshop Fridays. Reich was strongly against independent contracting way back then.
No such thing as “unintended consequences.”
The point is to drive them onto the gov’t plantation.
Craft a law that cuts 2 Million workers loose and then step in and offer relief – free shit to get em over “the hump” and then lifelong dependency at the gov’t tit.
izlamo delenda est …
You can bet most of those writers are Not conservatives.
Let them stay there and eat sand.
“Excuse me Mr. Freelance. We only need 17 articles from You this year. Thanks. Can you please send in that new writer in the hallway who you will be sharing your desk with. Thank you.”
“Oh, and by the way, LEARN TO CODE!”
Sincerely,
Mr. Ligma Balsac
VOX Human Resources Dept.
CA’s pot business has been a disaster as well.
Funny how other states manage their business W/O epic clusterfuckiness, but apparently the sea breeze makes for empty heads.
Or something.
Like Tim said.
0bamacare had a similar impact, requiring an employer to provide healthcare if the employee worked more than 32 (?) hours per week. So employers went out of their way to ensure employees didn’t work that many hours so they wouldn’t have to pay for healthcare, which could easily add 50% to the cost of employment. Which means that employees are, as AOC says, working more than one job to make ends meet. But the reason they are doing so is because of 0bamacare.
Back in the early 80’s, when the company I worked for wet bankrupt, I became a free-lance designer/draftsperson. I started getting paid for every single hour I worked or for the time spent driving to the job site (sometimes 2.5 hours away) or driving to meetings. I started making very good money. Back then, there were NO benefits, and employers begrudged the 1 week paid vacation time which they were required by law to give you (this was in Toronto, Canada). So this was the start of my self-employed business career, which lasted from 1980 to 2005.
All of this bad policy in California is driving people to Nevada. They’re bringing their bad policy with them and have turned our state blue. We need a wall.
Brown Eyed Girl ^^^add to that all the illegals working in the motels and restaurants and taking jobs from Americans.
@grool January 8, 2020 at 4:33 am
> I hear Canada is nice. Or Mexico.
Oh, Canada. Definitely. Mexico’s just like California. With a bit fewer Mexicans.